Thesis (Ph. D.)--Flinders University, Centre for Development Studies. / Typescript (bound). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 224-256). Also available online.

This thesis examines the history of female immigrant domestic labour in Canada from a socialist feminist perspective. Over the past hundred years, Canadian immigration policy with respect to domestic workers became increasingly regressive with the shift in the racial composition of foreign female domestics. The women's movement contributed to this change as gains in Canadian women's public rights did not effectively challenge the dominant social paradigm of women's roles, and so left intact the public-private divide and the sexual division of labour to which were allied biases of race and class. The women's movement thus became an unwitting participant in the formulation of regressive immigration policies which rebounded on the women's movement itself, reinforcing its internal divisions.

Thesis (M.P.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1990. / Also available in print.

Thesis (M.P.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available in print.

No description available.

No description available.

MGS / Department of Youth and Gender Studies / See the attached abstract below

In this study, an examination of the everyday experiences of the contract migrant Filipina domestic helpers exposes a culture of indifference which pervades the Hong Kong society on all levels--individual, community, and judiciary. At the centre of the abuses inflicted upon the Helpers is the employment contract with extraordinarily restrictive terms which promotes abuse by many employers. This study also looks at the transnational informal social infrastructure which has been organized by the Filipino community to mediate the hostile working environment engendered by the indifference of the global economic and political climate upon their lives. Faced with the task of implementing new policies for controlling labour migration into Hong Kong, the legislators have focused on the end result and finding the means with which to accomplish their goal. Embedded within this process are unexamined cultural mores and practices. Although the starting point is to benefit the community, by providing domestic helpers to serve the middle and upper class households, too often the abusive consequences to individual migrants are ignored as the women become the means to an end. Migration has often been viewed as an aberration to the notion of the sedentary community. Treated as an anomaly, it is the migrant who problematizes simple theoretical positions of social organization and structure. The migrant is always treated as the one who does not conform to the ideal community and is conveniently merged into existing social categories, such as the lower status of women in Hong Kong, and the lower status of domestic workers -- relegated thereby to the periphery of the society's consciousness.